Tempo and volume for fractal tune

Intro

Set tempo and volume for fractal tunes or metronome, or vary them

The Tempo field here sets the master volume for the tune - then the other options let you vary the tempo and volume away from it in various ways. The tempo you set will be the real tempo for some of the simpler fractal tunes with each seed note playing a single beat. But if the seeds use fractional beats then it may be slower or faster than the actual heard tempo of the tune.

The option to vary the timing or volume by arpeggio position can be used to make tunes that get quieter, or louder, or faster or slower for notes further along the arpeggio.

The options to vary the rhythm by seed position will let you make rhythms that vary in tempo within each "bar" - as is often done by human performers. The volume variation lets you vary the volume similarly.

Then - the sustain option lets you make fractal tunes with overlapping sustained notes. The Humanise Timings is useful if you find the fractal tune or metronome too crips sounding and want chords to be just a bit unsynchronised or arpeggiated.

The Set min tempo and Set max tempo options are useful if you find the tempo varies too much as a result of the other options, - you can set a limit on how far it can vary either way.

Tempo

Vary this to make the tune faster or slower...

This is used to speed up or slow down playback, except for the Analyse Voice task where it sets the length of the note to play.

Normally shown as a tempo in beats per minute in the other tasks, but can be set to show the note length by unselecting: Bs | Tempo and Volume for Tune | Show tempi for note length 1. In the Polyrhythm Metronome, it shows bars per minute.

In the fractal tune tasks, this works by setting how long a seed note is in seconds - well, the seed note length that is prior to any changes you make in the rhythm.

Fractal rhythms and tunes that get faster as they go higher or lower in pitch will affect the momentary tempo at which individual notes are played. But whatever the other parameters, the overall speed of the tune will still increase or decrease in proportion depending on what you set for the tempo, or time for one note here.

You can make seeds for fractal tunes from a phrase you play yourself from Bs | Seed. If you do it that way, then when you have it set to show the note times, thhis field shows the time used to play any note which you recorded originally as one second. So if it is 0.125 (one eighth) then your seed gets speeded up eight times.

Normally this shows the tempo rather than the note length. In that case 60 is 60 beats per minute, which gives the original recording speed for seeds you record yourself. Then it would be 480 for an eight times faster playback and so on.

Tempo - SPIN

Adjust the tempo (or note length)...

Adjusts the tempo one beat per minute at a time

Tempo - SPIN

Adjust tempo (or note length) by larger amounts...

Clicking this twice doubles (or halves) the tempo or the note length.

(Each click multiplies it by root two).

Set min tempo

Set a minimum tempo for the longest notes in the melody...

See the tool tip extra help for Set max tempo for more informationd

Set min tempo

This is the minimum tempo for the longest notes in the melody...

See the tool tip extra help for Set max tempo for more information

Set max tempo

Set a maximum tempo for the shortest notes in the melody...

Short notes get affected more and more as they approach the maximum tempo while long notes will be left unchanged. So melody and seed timings become more even as you approach the maximum tempo.

The way it is done is that as the notes in the original melody get shorter, they get increased in length to compensate. The compensation gets more and more as the notes get shorter and it is done in such a way that no matter how short the original notes were, the maximum tempo can never quite be reached.

This means that it is a gradual rather than a sharp cut off point with the change happening smoothly.

For those interested in how it is done:

The formula used actually is

f(x) = sin(x) for x = 0

= atan(x) for x > PI/4

and it changes smoothly from sin(x) to atan(x) as x increases from 0 to PI/4.

This formula gets applied to the log of the ratio of the note time to the tempo indication for notes of length 1 (or the minimum tempo, whichever is greatest) and then the inverse log is taken again at the end of the calculation.

One could use any function here that has a slope of 1 at x = 0 and approaches 1 asymptotically as x tends to infinity. (e.g. a formula derived from the integral of the normal distribution would seem a natural choice). The one used here was chosen because it is fast and easy for a computer to calculate.

Set max tempo

This is the maximum tempo for the shortest notes in the melody...

See the tool tip extra help for Set max tempo for more information

Vary rhythm by seed position

Varies the timing within the bar, also timing of bars too...

Normally when musicians play, they don't play quite a fixed beat like a clock ticking. Instead, the beats vary within a bar so for instance the first beat might be rather longer than the remaining ones and the last beat really quite short in comparison sometimes, or it may be the other way around. Also often bars too vary in length over larger time scales for instance in a repeating four bar pattern, the bars may not all be quite the same length.

One way around that in software is to set what musicians call a "groove" - a pre-recorded pattern of beats repeating every bar.

This option lets you vary the beat in another way by setting the amount of variation you want, and where in the bar you want the fastest beat to go. This gives a continuously varying organic feel to the rhythm, though it doesn't quite have the flexibility of a groove, it is automatic to set up and vary, and you can then try to follow the computer's timing pattern.

Also it lets you vary the beat pattern at larger time scales - that's what the level parameter is about. See the tool tip for that option for details

Vary tempo to

How much to vary the beat length by...

This isn't quite the beat length itself actually, as it is a continuous thing. If you set this to say 80 % and had a huge number of beats, say 100, then the fastest beat would be pretty close to 80 percent of the normal 1/100th of a bar. For smaller numbers of beats per bar, then the actual shortest beat length will be a bit longer than this.

Unlike a normal play list, these fractal tunes become part of the tune you are working on. You can open the original files into this tune, but once you do so, they then become part of this tune, and if you change the original it will have no more effect.

Use play list / tempo map

Switch on the play list or tempo map

Play

Play midi clip, chord progression, fractal tune or metronome..

What this plays depends on the task selected from the Tasks menu.

SHORTCUT FOR FRACTAL TUNES OR METRONOME

You can use Shift + click to fast forward...

Also Ctrl to fast forward even more. Shift multiplies the tempo by 10 and Ctrl multiplies it by 100, so the two together would play a fractal tune at for instance, 60,000 instead of 60 as the tempo. This is useful sometimes for fast forwarding through fractal tunes.

Pause

Pause playback, or continue play

Volume

The volume is also affected by the volume for individual parts in the Parts window. Also in the case of midi instruments you can configure the volume for windows as a whole using Bs | Play Control - Volume.

For the Waveform player (triangle wave etc), go to the Waveform Player Audio Properties window (Ctrl + 188))

For CSound instruments, you can set the overall volume in the CSound Options window (Ctrl + 168))

You can also vary the volume in Out | Options | More | Volume Remapping (Ctrl + 158)) and if playing from Midi In there's another setting at In | Options | Keyboard Options | Touch (Ctrl + 91))

See also Help | FAQ - trouble shooting | Why is everything so quiet

Help = F1

Click for help for this window. Or F1. Other opts: Shift , Alt, Ctrl + click...

F1 or click shows the help for the current window in your web browser.

Some windows may have no help yet in which case the help icon is shown crossed out with a red line.

Shift + F1 or Shift + Click brings up the tool tips extra help window (this window) to show any extra help for a tool tip.

You can tell if a tool tip has extra help if it ends ... like this one.

Ctrl + F1 or Ctrl + click takes you to the list of keyboard shortcuts for Tune Smithy.

Alt + F1 or Alt + click (alternatively Caps lock physically held down + F1 or Click) takes you to the on-line page at the robertinventor.com web site about the current main window task - which gives a short introduction to it for newbies to the program. If there is no on-line page specific to a task, takes you to the main tune smithy page on the web site.

Since the help for Tune Smithy is currently a bit out of date and needs to be redone completely for the new 3.0 release, then you may find the on-line page for some of the newer tasks particularly useful.

Organise Windows = F2

Or F2 - Reset / save / open for individual windows, right click for cat. list...

Shows the Organise windows window - which you can use to reset all the parameters for the current window - or save them all, or open previously saved parameters for just this window. Also has a drop list of all the windows and their shortcuts.

You can also right click on this icon as a quick way to get the floating drop menu of all the Tune Smithy windows organised by category

Fractal Tunes Dialog Star

Tip of the day - Fractal Tunes category - right click for neighbouring windows...

Left click for a tip of the day in this category.

Right click to see a menu of neighbouring windows.

The neighbours are the ones you most often move to after this one or within a minute of this one, arranged by popularity.

So as you continue to use FTS, it will learn your habits, and the neighbouring windows listed here, should be the ones you most often visit after this one.